Cisco Duo is a two-factor authentication system (2FA), acquired by Cisco in October 2018. It provides single sign-on (SSO) and endpoint visibility, as well as access controls and policy controlled adaptive authentication.
$3
per month per user
Microsoft Entra ID
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Microsoft Azure Active Directory or Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution supporting restricted access to applications with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) built-in, single sign-on (SSO), B2B collaboration controls, self-service password, and integration with Microsoft productivity and cloud storage (Office 365, OneDrive, etc) as well as 3rd party services.
I would fully expect a competitor like Okta or any other multifactor mechanic to function pretty similarly, and I hesitate to say duos the best. I think the idea is that it's a simple concept, but it does it well. So I haven't evaluated any myself outside of duo, but I'm also …
Cisco Duo had an integrated method for handling MFA on Endpoints and Servers. This was a huge bonus. Administration and implementation seemed more efficient as well.
There are Okta has that Duo does not have, however since my environment has CISCO solutions implemented and the service that we receive from the vendor and integrator is top quality, DUO was the right choice.
We selected Cisco Secure Access by Duo due to its ability to interoperate with almost any on premise, cloud, or hybrid application or system. Duo also integrates nicely with our other security systems, including XDR. As well, Duo is a market leader and always pushing the sector …
Cisco Secure Access by Duo's ability to integrate with a wide variety of SSO applications and systems, as well as its focus on usability, make it an attractive option.
Google Workspace is really pretty much the only other primary competitor. And again, Microsoft has just been the standard for so many years and it was in place at the organization when I was first brought on at the beginning of my tenure. And so it didn't seem logical to switch …
Yeah, so basically that product to be honest, was more of a getting comfortable with cloud identification management. So that was a product I used. It has all the policies for desktops and doing updates and all that central directory identity provisioning stuff for users. Users …
We use DUO as another IDP solution and we also evaluated Okta as a solution. We didn't have a choice to be honest, because Microsoft products, you can't get away with it, but it's built in and a bunch of other providers have it as authentication, so it's great.
We've used other Microsoft products and we've also used some standalone products, like each application you can have its own identity, so we've looked at some of those too, but we try to use the Entra ID as much as possible because it offers a wider range of reliability.
We actually did just the Microsoft Active directory, so we picked the actual. We did just pure active directory. I mean the open LDAP stuff, but it didn't quite work that well.
I think the closest one would be because we recently went through an implementation, but Salesforce has their own version of a signal sign-on product. It's not the same. I'd say that it works, but it doesn't give you as much functionality.
For us, it was a natural evolution of our use of active directory. As we went from on-premises to the cloud, this was an easy extension of our authentication infrastructure. We looked at other products from Oracle, so Oracle ID, Oracle Identity Management. We looked at pink …
We used Google before, but we tried to use it but it didn't. We didn't like it. I'll this is better. It integrates better with our environment that we have right now.
We're Microsoft dedicated. We do however, displace other products that do similar things, so a lot of third party products, so even like Okta. In my opinion, it's just equally as powerful or more powerful of a product and it has a way better price point for customers. I think …
I'd love to tell you about Amazon IM and Google's IM because they suck and they tell you to use Entra ID, factually. They're like, oh cool, set it up with Entra ID. They just know you're going to do it. I don't think you guys have a competitor, to be honest. You just don't.
We're a Microsoft Native shop, so we're looking at Okta's identity tool, SailPoint and a few other competitors of Venture id. And we decided to go with this one because we're already using Active Directory, so just using the native Microsoft Suites kind of just they integrate …
Well, it's natively integrated with all Microsoft Stack, so it comes very handy when you need to, for example, use it for Intune Association, et cetera, so it's very handy.
Previously we had worked with Okta, which was kind of using our replacement for active directory server, and I know that has integrations, but we ended up just going with Entra ID just for the ease of access and without having to stack on an additional third party application …
In our application use case, it's kind of unique and there isn't any like for if there's anything on the identity space, probably Okta. Yeah. But we do both use them and we have integration with Okta and Entra ID, so it works for us very well.
Microsoft Login ID was chosen for its ease of use and availability of access via any device. Unlike the old Active Directory, it has a low learning curve and is very intuitive for analysts who are using it for the first time.
Cisco Duois is well suited in all kinds of scenarios where you need to ensure proper security measurements, I think. We can't just rely on our passwords only, as they can be easily stolen through phishing or data breaches thus keeping multi factor authentication is quite essential. I always prefer MFA or at least 2FA for any critical system.
For one, a significant factor for us is that it is integrated with HelloID, which gives us, as the IT department, a lot of time back because we don’t need to create user accounts manually. It is great for the roles we have defined, as they can be used repeatedly. A great feature is that guest accounts can be created for external users; we only need to be in a closed area of your domain.
It addresses the issue of identity management very well with respect to putting in that multi authentication.
It can also support with respect to we can push these policies into another product that is not Microsoft, but it needs that SSO so we can have one account going into multi different accounts. I think that's the biggest pros and the easy use of Microsoft 365 also is one of those pros also in terms of administration.
Documentation is oftentimes missing key information for proper implementation. This is circumvented by reading third-party guides or contacting support for additional details.
They do not push Fail-Closed as much as I think they should. Fail-Open is fairly trivial to bypass and it should be made known to the customer during setup how much this will affect overall security.
More vendor integration is something that is always craved by administrators. There are so many third-parties to integrate with.
Well, I'm an active ad admin, so there's a lot of features in active directory that Entra ID seems to be just adding now. We're kind of figuring out that the policies are different than Entra ID that they were in active directory and we're finding other products to do that, like Azure policy. Some things I'm used to seeing in identity products or like active directory aren't in Entra iID, but are doing good job of managing stuff that it does so far.
There are a lot of competing solutions on the market; however, Duo "just works", and there is little to no learning curve for the new members to be acclimated to it. As long as that continues I see it as the preferred option moving forward
Entra ID is a vital part of our Identity management/administration. With the integrations it has to other Microsoft products, setup and configuration is a breeze. Additionally, Microsoft has been around a long time and have the resources to ensure this product is stable and secure for many years to come. We know it will evolve with time to provide us what we need as technology changes.
La interfaz es intuitiva y fácil de navegar, lo que permite a los usuarios administrar sus dispositivos y acceder a las políticas sin problemas. La integración con las aplicaciones SSO y SaaS facilita aún más el proceso de acceso, mejorando la experiencia del usuario.
Very easily usable. It could be easier to use. Implementation was kind of tricky. We do run a hybrid environment, so we're syncing a local active directory instance with Entra ID, so that could be a little tricky. But outside of that, if you're not running a hybrid deployment or a version of Entra ID usually, it's pretty straightforward.
In the last 5+ years we've been using Duo, there may have been 1 outage that impacted us. We do receive periodic notifications of issues but, for the most part, they impact carriers or functionality that we either don't use, or do not care about.
Since it’s a reputable company, I have received technical support when needed and I trust that if anything else happens I can contact them with any issues. I haven’t experienced bad customer service and I totally feel supported while using this authentication method. No complains so far and the high rating!
Microsoft has offered Azure Active Directory as a solution for a couple of decades now, so they have seen and anticipated almost any issue that an organization may face and can therefore help. The cloud offering of Azure Active Directory offers some additional "self healing" or monitoring services that can minimize the need for a service call. However, as with most large companies supporting a fast growing market, there may be some gaps in service knowledge (and particularly processing) from the front line / tier one staff as they follow a corporate script at first contact.
Implementation was straight forward and you can isolate different scenarios in order to test new application setup or add to an existing setup. Gui interface is pretty easy to understand and follow. I had no experience with Duo and still manage to easily set up new policies and rules.
Make sure you use a good partner. Our implementation was a bit longer and more problematic than we expected. Our partner got it done, but, in my opinion, some of their inexperience and staffing issues were evident.
Ultimately we ended up going with Cisco Duo because we are a Cisco shop. All of our networking infrastructure, our phones, our wireless environment is Cisco based. It made logical sense to stay with a product that we already have a line of support with. With a smaller support / tech group we depend on outside Cisco support. That support is already here for us, so we stayed with a Cisco product.
Microsoft Entra ID is not as stand-alone product as competitors like Okta. It may lack some of the features that competing products have but on the other hand it integrates both technically and license wise with other Microsoft cloud services and is easy to deploy. It is also the easiest way to extend identity management to the cloud if you already have Microsoft Active Directory in use.
It's one of those things that only costs money in the sense of you have to convince a leadership team to spend money to save money, right? Like a compromise is far more expensive than duo paying for duo. So specifically it's really just about trying to prevent problems. And so while it costs money and we don't have a direct return on investment that we can point out immediately, I would still always advocate for it just because it keeps security. Paying for security is cheaper than getting compromised essentially.
I don't know if I can really quantify that. It's one of those products that just exists and so there's not a whole lot of changes that we need to make with the product. And so I guess in terms of value, what we get is we don't have to worry about the identity management piece. We know that that's taken care of.
